• Under pressure from fundamentalist Catholics, the concert of the American artist Kati Malone scheduled for Saturday night in a church in Carnac has been canceled.
  • The mayor of the commune filed a complaint, denouncing "this violence of a deeply totalitarian nature".
  • The diocese of Vannes, which had approved the concert, also condemned the excesses that occurred Saturday night.

He preferred to cancel the concert to avoid violence. Saturday evening, while the American organist Kati Malone was to perform in a church in Carnac (Morbihan), the mayor of the town was forced to cancel the performance under pressure from fundamentalist Catholics close to Civitas who came to demonstrate in front of the religious building. "Forty young people with clear necks were hampered by violence, one of my assistants was slapped under the cries of "Back Satan!", a concert that was to take place in the church of Saint-Cornély," wrote on his Facebook page Olivier Lepick, mayor of Carnac.

"I could not tolerate that the violence of the demonstrators did not fall on an audience that came peacefully to attend a concert or that our church would suffer damage if by chance it had been necessary to evacuate by force the illuminated," he added, stressing that the concert organized, under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture and the departmental council, had been approved by the bishopric and the parish committee. Following these excesses, the elected official filed a complaint. "I strongly condemn this violence of a profoundly totalitarian nature that would impose radical convictions on others by force," said Olivier Lepick.

The diocese of Vannes denounces the events

In a statement, the union of Brittany artists musicians CGT condemned a far right that "now claims to dictate its programming to show organizers". "If members of Civitas or a small group of the same kind try again to prevent the holding of a show in Brittany, they will have to expect to find militants of the CGT in front of them," responded the union.

The diocese of Vannes also denounced Saturday's events, stressing that "the Church could not be the place of any violence". "The parish discernment commission has never identified in the program any work contrary to the message of the Gospel that could have harmed the sacred dimension of the place," the diocese says on its website. "The title Sacer profanare, which seems to have ignited the powder, has never appeared on the program presented for this concert," adds the diocese.

  • Concert
  • Culture
  • Catholicism
  • Far right
  • Religion
  • Church
  • Brittany
  • Society